Purin and Taruto Present: The Fairy Grotto
by sakuuya
Summary: Purin and Taruto put on a puppet show for the Mews and aliens, with a few minor snags along the way.


**Purin and Taruto Present: The Fairy Grotto  
**

This story started life tacked onto a contest announcement in order to refrain from breaking the site rules (which don't allow chapters without story content). That contest is now over, so I'm reposting this little ficlet on its own for posterity. It takes its title and inspiration from the Chinese fairy tale "The Fairy Grotto," and is not much more than silly fluff-it's not meant to be part of the Ewniverse or anything like that.

**Disclaimer:** _Tokyo Mew Mew _belongs to Mia Ikumi, Reiko Yoshida, and Kodansha Ltd., and "The Fairy Grotto" is a traditional Chinese story.

* * *

The tables of Café Mew Mew were pushed back against the walls and stripped of their chairs, which had been herded into a rough semicircle in front of a wooden puppet theater, the two-dimensional kind with painted curtains.

Purin, who had set up the whole tableaux, hopped nervously from one foot to the other. People were getting seated, and it was almost time for the show, but her co-star hadn't shown up. She glanced up with huge eyes at Keiichiro, who was standing placidly next to the stage, a big hardcover book in his hands. He just smiled at her like he wasn't worried at all. How could he not be worried?

She was mentally deciding whether it would work to put some of the puppets on her feet when Taruto burst into the café with Kish and Pai in tow.

"_Sorry_," he hissed, ducking behind the theater, "I had a hard time convincing _some people_ that this wasn't a waste of his stupid old-man time." And indeed, of all the assembled audience, Pai looked by far the least thrilled to be witnessing what Taruto had assured him was "The best earth entertainment ever!"

Purin was so relieved that she hugged Taruto in a way that was very like falling on him. He, of course, turned bright red all the way to the tips of his ears.

"I'm so glad you showed up! I was afraid you ditched me, na no da!"

"N-no, of course not," Taruto replied, still a little shaken by the hug that seemed to be never-ending. "This is gonna be awesome! I wouldn't miss it for anything!"

Purin _finally_ let him go after Keiichiro turned to them and mouthed, "Ready?" She and Taruto pulled puppets onto her hands, and Purin made one of her puppets nod back at Keiichiro.

"Let's get this show going, na no da!" she whispered in the loudest whisper Taruto had ever heard.

o()o

"Once upon a time, there were two young boys called Lu Chen and Yuan Chao," Keiichiro read. On cue, two hand puppets, one with a blue body and one with a red one, popped up in the puppet theater, both played by Purin. For now, Taruto was just in charge of scenery. "They were going to gather water when they noticed that it was a beautiful day and decided to take a walk."

On that cue, Taruto held up a backdrop of painted red flowers. Purin tried to make her two puppets turn to look at it, but ended up smacking them into it instead, to stifled giggles from the audience. Taruto groaned inwardly.

"See? I told you this would be cute," he heard Zakuro whisper from the audience, followed by unintelligible muttering courtesy of Pai.

"Shh! You guys!" Ichigo said, just a bit louder than either Zakuro or Pai had been. But it must have done the trick, because Keiichiro continued.

"After a long time walking, they came to the mouth of a cave, in front of which were two fairies playing chess."

Taruto's hand quickly shot out and placed a square, black-and-white checked table on the puppet theater's little "stage" of a ledge; he then tugged on two winged hand puppets, and had them take turns leaning over the board and moving imaginary pieces—pieces that he could, in fact, not imagine, as Purin's explanation of chess had been...suspect.

"The two boys sat down to watch the fairies." Keiichiro paused and nodded at Taruto, who took a deep breath. This was his big scene. Keeping the "fairies" visible to the audience, he lowered his head and picked up a small, rabbit-shaped beanbag toy with his teeth. "Beside the fairies was a rabbit; every time the rabbit jumped up, flowers bloomed at its feet, and each time it landed, the flowers died."

With all the concentration he could muster, Taruto threw the rabbit into the air, high enough that it appeared "onstage," and then caught it in his mouth when it came back down. He threw it up again...and there was a **_shnnk_** sound, and the rabbit did not come down.

When Taruto twisted to look behind him, he saw the rabbit pinned to the wall by a sword, forlornly leaking its beans. The whole room seemed to hold its breath for a moment.

"What the _heck_, Kish?" Ichigo screeched, breaking the silence.

"It just looked so inviting!" Kish answered. Even though he couldn't see his comrade's face from behind the puppet theater, Taruto could tell that the older alien was pleased with himself.

"I knew I shouldn't have let you guys come over," Ryou sighed.

As the audience continued to bicker, Keiichiro leaned down and whispered to the two puppeteers, "Do you want me to just keep going?"

Taruto deferred to Purin, who was, after all, the mastermind. Her eyes were wide with panic, but she thought for a moment before responding.

"We can't do that!" she said finally. "Just make up a story and we'll go along with it. Purin trusts you, na no da!"

Keiichiro smiled. "I think I can do that."

It took a while to get the audience calmed down and back in their seats. Taruto pulled the dead beanbag rabbit out of the wall, but did not give Kish his sword back. Sure, he had one more, but Taruto figured it was a good idea to limit his ammunition as much as possible.

Eventually, Keiichiro continued: "When the fairies finished their game, they saw that a stray arrow had killed their rabbit. The two boys turned to go back to their village, but the fairies warned them not to. Despite the warnings, the boys were adamant about returning home, so the fairies gave them reeds, which they said the boys could use to get back into the cave."

Purin and Taruto mimed his words with their puppets, until Taruto slowly backed the "fairies" off of the stage to simulate Purin's puppets walking away. So far, this was all pretty much like the way the real story went, and Taruto was thankful for that. He'd practiced for a week to get all his puppets' movements right, and he wasn't keen on the idea of improvising.

His next role was a pair of villagers, who were talking in the opposite corner of the stage when Lu Chen and Yuan Chao walked up to them.

"But as the boys walked back home, they noticed something odd—nothing seemed to be moving. When they got back to their village, even the people there seemed to be frozen. They realized that the rabbit had represented the passage of time, and since some inconsiderate person—" Taruto thought that bit sounded a little pointed, "—killed it, it stopped all of time."

Aw, crap! Taruto stilled his hands in odd positions. Purin's blue-clad puppet (Taruto had never been totally clear on which one was Lu Chen and which one was Yuan Chao) poked at the villager on his left hand.

"In a panic, they ran back to the fairies' cave, but along the way they lost their reeds, and when they arrived, there was solid rock where the cave used to be. They knocked on the mountain, but the fairies didn't answer, so in their grief, they beat their heads against the rock until they died."

Purin smacked her two puppets together with a loud clapped, then had them collapse on stage. Once again, the audience was stunned silent when Purin jumped up and took a bow.

"The end, na no da!"


End file.
